lived again the past
In books, where there were none to laugh at him
And where—to him, at least—a world was kind
That is no more a world.
Hence from this distance he was able to understand the flood of human nature and capable of pronouncing judgment upon it. He was gifted, as he said, with an “ingenuous right of utterance” which gave him full license to speak his mind. He knew that Gabrielle’s unfaithfulness must come to Roman’s ears. He knew the tragedy that it would be to this proud, sensitive friend of his, and, knowing it, offered his aid if ever Roman’s light should be obscured.
It is in brilliant contrast to this “unhappy turtle” that Penn-Raven appears, Penn-Raven, the bounder, archguest, corruptor and healer in one breath. He it is, with his solid face, thick lips and violet eyes, upon whom “one may not wholly look and live”, for in Penn-Raven there is more of the devil than is safe to investigate. The devil only knows why he came to Bartholow, why he possessed those violet eyes withal, and, after he had met Gabrielle, why the devil he ever went away. He was large and muscular and imbued with a healthy-mindedness which could purge the soul of Roman. Not only was he able to change this man’s outlook upon life, bringing him light where only darkness had lain, but he could worm his way to the heart of Gabrielle and make her his for as long as he chose. He loved her with all the force of his animal self, yet he could hint to her that she was insufficient to Bartholow’s present needs. Callous Penn-Raven! He never understood Gabrielle, though he later called her “flower and weed together”. In her he saw mostly the weed, the woman who had forsaken her husband and who might be expecting him to take her away. So he thought and so he said to her, not noticing the agony he caused. He did not know the woman he later called the flower who, though she had surrendered herself to his affections, yet saved for Roman a far transcending love. Thus to hint that she go with him was perhaps insulting her. At any rate it was a brutal intimation, a selfish one—and Penn-Raven was always brutal and always selfish. He could cry aloud of his tragedies and disillusions, the while the woman by his side was preparing herself to die. He could confront the husband with a nasty truth, looking upon him with those violet eyes, half triumphant and half sad. “Setting it rather sharply,” he could say, “you married the wrong woman.”
Poor Bartholow and proud! Stung with the malevolent implications with which Penn-Raven sought to gain Gabrielle, Bartholow once leaped upon him, feeling his “thick neck luxuriously yielding to his fingers”, and in his absurd pride thought to throttle him. At that time he was experiencing more pain than ever he had through the long winter before. He as a proud idealist was waking up to the fact that to be bathed in a new light is not to be external to sorrow.
Imagine his position. During the months previous to the spring when he “ached with renovation”, Bartholow had suffered from the malady of the sick-soul. His hopes were dulled, his ideals gone crashing. In his wife, for whom he cherished a desire to bring her closer to his thoughts, he found a woman cold and bitter from the disappointments she had suffered. Plainly she knew she had married the wrong man, plainly he did not know it. For to him life meant no more than disillusion, until one day, perhaps in April, life brought Penn-Raven with his zest for living, with his red-corpuscular religion of healthy-mindedness. To Bartholow, ready to catch at anything, this formidable spirit was the light. He grasped and claimed it. The light was his remaking. He was of the elect of earth, the twice-born. With joy gleaming in his eyes, he was up at dawn that spring morning,
Affirming his emergence to the Power
That filled him as light fills a buried room